Life's a laugh with Native comic

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Don Kelly is one of Canada's hottest young comedians, but he's not tripping over bags of money on his way to the stage door just yet.

Kelly, a 32-year-old Ojibwa from Winnipeg, went to Toronto in September to compete in the Yuk Yuk comedy chain's annual search for the best new standup comic in Canada. Going up against dozens of the best comics in the country, Kelly came in second.

His prize money? Well, there wasn't' any, actually.

Only the first place winner took any cash home this year. But Kelly, a writer for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in Ottawa, didn't go into comedy to make a buck.

After admiring the work of other standup performers for year, he decided to try it himself when he moved to Ottawa two years ago.

"I figured I was new in town and didn't know anyone, so what did I have to lose? And it was something I'd always wanted to try.

"When I turned 30 and came to Ottawa, I thought, either I try this now or run the risk of becoming a bitter, cynical old man 10 years from now, watching standup on TV and thinking, 'Gees, I could've done that!'"

Starting out was anything but easy.

"I was terrible the first few times. Actually, I was terrible the first 20 times. I was incredibly nervous."

Aside from living in Ottawa for the last two years, Kelly has called Winnipeg his home base since he was five. He's originally from Onegaming, a Treaty 3 reserve on Lake of the Woods. He jokes about being Native on stage, but admits it took him a while to work it into his act.

"After about a year of doing standup, I wanted to address my background because it means something to me, and because it's something unique I haven't really seen it explored much in comedy."

Here's a sample: "I'm one of the few Native comics working the clubs today. People say I should play it up because it's unique and that, I should use my Indian name as a stage name. Well, I'm sticking with the name Don Kelly, because my Indian name is Runs Like a Girl."

And another: "Club owners will sometimes try to take advantage of me by trying to pay me in trinkets instead of money, so I tell them, 'Ooh, shiny beads and a mirror. Throw in some gun powder for my thunder stick and you've got yourself a deal!"

These and other jokes about being Native garner big laughs for Kelly, and Native people who've see his act have no problem with it, to his knowledge. Sometimes, however, not everyone gets the point.

"Some people still can't accommodate the fact that this doesn't fit in with the Cleveland Indians logo they have in their heads, which is their image of a Native person.

"Sometimes, I find the minute I mention I'm Native, audiences get their guard up a bit. They're thinking 'Native people are an oppressed minority. If he says anything that involves the word Native, then we're laughing at Natives and that's bad."

But once Kelly eases into his act, any hesitation in the audience seems to fade away, replaced by a steady steam of laughs

"The one rule I have for myself in doing stuff about being Native is I never want to do anything that would be offensive if I saw a non-Native person do it. I don't perpetuate stereotypes to get cheap laughs. I make fun of stereotypes and challenge them."

Kelly stresses that he's a versatile comedian, with only 90 seconds out of a 10-minute routine touching on Native humour at all.

"I don't want to be seen as just a Native comic. I want to have range."

His forte so far seems to be political satire, which he developed after Kim Campbell's crushing electoral defeat two years ago. Poking fun at politicians definitely goes over big in a city full of bureaucrats and Parliament Hill journalists.

Placing second at the Toronto contest last month gave him a higher profile on the Canadian comedy scene. But Don Kelly's not giving up his day job yet. He's going to do comedy for a few more years to see where it takes him. If things really get rolling, he may even have to move to Toronto.